


The Long Dry Road That Lead Me Here

by Missy



Category: Almost Famous (2000)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Growing Up, Inspired by Music, Leaving Home, Music, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 21:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5513924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was always about the music.  Or, Penny Lane grows up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Dry Road That Lead Me Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perfectlystill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlystill/gifts).



Her mother begins it. 

Penny is just nine years old, and she’s nearly the same age as the medium that will light and drive her whole life. Rock and roll is everywhere in 1965; it’s dripping from the streetlamps and floating through the air. It decorates her tiny bedroom, and it lightens the lunch table gossip. Some girls love the Beatles, some girls are devoted to the Stones; some of them are just as devoted to slightly more obscure Mersybeat acts or still cry out for Elvis like their mamas do. 

Little Penny loves them all. She wants to meet Paul McCartney because he has kind eyes, and she thinks Ringo’s the keenest because he seems the least likely to conform to the reality of the rules, and she’d love to dance with Keith Richards just once (she will, much later, light his cigarette over a dinner in the Russian Tea Room). Her mother sees everything over her aching toes and weary fingertips; for her tenth birthday she buys Penny a hi-fi, bright pink, long-saved for, and a handful of Buddy Holly 45s.

Buddy is new territory for Penny; he died before she was old enough to hold her own head up. But the music speaks to her – almost fairly screams to her – of love and passion. Things that pique her interest and leave her dancing alone in her room with a teddy bear. She never did long for friends, when she had music to give her meaning and purpose.

###

But girls grow up, and Penny, a born leader, nearly automatically amasses a small clique of friends by the time she’s thirteen. The summers are idyllic – they do odd jobs for record money, and every Saturday they pool their funds to buy as many platters as they can carry. The afternoons are spent dancing and singing to Janis and Hendrix and the Mamas and the Papas. They dream about going to a concert – any concert – together, and when the Stones pass through town they go as a team to scream at Jagger’s feet. When she’s older she’ll remember that white princess case, loaded with albums and 45s, coming to her front door, and wishing she knew what happened to it when they graduated high school.

###

Penny does graduate – at the back of the pack, but she makes her marks and her mother is as proud as she can be. Her late teen years are about hitchhiking to the latest gig, to the next band; the money she makes working a supermarket is poured into her record collection. At seventeen she starts to feel the stirrings of her own wildness; a yen for the road, to see new bands, experience new things. She wonders what the ballroom at Clear Lake looks like in person, and wants to feel Jim Morrison’s vibrato trembling in her own chest.

One day her tether snaps. She counts her money and buys a record case and a new pair of walking shoes. As a gesture of respect to her mother, she makes the bed and turns off the light. 

All Penny takes with her from her old life is the new hi fi she bought with her final paycheck from the market and a small wad of cash. It’s enough for gas money and to get herself back on the road, it’s enough to keep her alive until she gets to LA, the Strip, and the Whiskey. 

She calls her old friends; her college-bound friends – she tells them she’s going to be a star and that they should keep an eye on her. She’ll be in the news. She’ll remember them. Stay loose. 

The house key is left under the mat before she walks up the stone pathway, before she finds the highway. 

Then she sticks up her chin and sticks out her thumb.

###

It take her a week to get to LA, and she pays her way. Does she ever pay her way. But it’s worth it when she opens her eyes and sees that Hollywood sign.

It’s just a beginning for her. A starting point. But she knows then that she’ll climb her way to a better world and points her boots toward Sunset to become part of the action.

###

She gives her love, her beauty, her presence and advice only to the worthy. That’s what she tells the girls to do, too, the group of fellow groupies who’ve clustered to her and who follow her from town to town the way she follows the stars.

She calls them the ‘Band Aids,’ and that’s what they do – inspire the band, help the band with their music. The screwing around, she’s said time and again, is optional. You do what you want to do, not what they need. Everyone else can make it sound dirty, make her seem worthless – but no one has permission to make her feel bad about herself, and no one can make her fall in love. Not when her heart belongs to the music.

###

And then, out of the blue, there’s Russell.

The first time she sees him onstage at a shitty club she knows he’s going someplace special, knows he’s going to be a real star. 

Penny had formed plans for the first time in her life that week; she’d been planning to go to Paris and hang out with Jagger and Marianne, then off to Carnaby Street to see what had so inspired her once upon a time. She has to make a quick choice; adventures with this unknown quantity or the known? In the end the promise of new flesh proves more alluring. She cancels her flight out of Toronto and spends the night in Russell’s hotel room, teaching him about pleasure, then about stage presence.

He firms up well under both forms of tutelage.

###

And then the band hires a new manager and everything goes to shit. Penny can feel herself being squeezed out of the picture, excised to the margins. For the first time in years, she feels jealous and lonely.

But Penny keeps her chin up. When it gets tough, she finds her girls. When it gets tough, she finds her record player. When it gets tough she listens to the Animals, the Stones, and good old Buddy.

They’ll tell a different story when she’s older, when the era is gone. But Penny sees the truth. 

It was all about the music. And it always will be.

**Author's Note:**

> Penny's one of my favorite characters, and I couldn't resist the opportunity to explore a bit more of her character! Have a happy Yuletide!


End file.
